Capturing wild beauty of Lanka:An exquisite photographic guide

Ifham Nizam interviews Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne, lead author and photographer of ‘A Photographic Guide to the Wildlife of Sri Lanka’ published by John Beaufoy Publishing.

Q: What first inspired your interest in natural history and biodiversity, particularly in Sri Lanka?

A:From the age of three, I was on Leopard Safari with my uncle Dodwell de Silva in Wilpattu and Yala. He was also a birdwatcher and used to bring with him a copy of G. M. Henry’s ‘A Guide to the Birds of Ceylon’ which was first published in 1955. I learnt from him to identify birds and to put a name to them. When I was around thirteen years old, I began to roam around Colombo with my neighbour Azly Nazeem and his classmate Jeevan William. I realised that some of the birds I knew from Yala and Wilpattu such as the Red-wattled Lapwing and the Indian Roller could be seen even in Colombo. It dawned on me I did not have to wait for trips out of Colombo to enjoy wildlife.

My parents Laskhmi and Dalton encouraged my interest in wildlife and used to give me wildlife books as presents for my birthday and Christmas. Sri Lanka in the 1970s and early 1980s was a poor country and even then I realised that I was in a privileged position to receive books like this. Most of the books had been published abroad and I read about rainforests. Thilo Hoffmann with the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society published a booklet about the need to save Sinharaja Rainforest from being logged. I was gobsmacked to learn that Sri Lanka had rainforests. Back then none of my friends and family believed me when I said that Sri Lanka has rainforests.

I was probably the only person in the whole school amongst students and teachers who had woken up to this. It shows the lack of awareness then. Everyone thought rainforests were something found in the Amazon. When I was fifteen with a handful of friends including Jeevan William, Lester Perera and Senaka Jayasuriya we trekked across Sinharaja. The Forest Department insisted we brought letters of permission from the school and parents.

They had at that time never had any school children wanting to trek across Sinharaja. By now I had realised that I had a deep love to learn about the wildlife around me in Colombo and in Sri Lanka. I began to attend meetings of the WNPS, March for Conservation (MFC), Field Ornithology Group of Sri Lanka (FOGSL) and the Sri Lanka Natural History Society (SLNHS) and began to learn a lot from a bunch of inspirational people. The learning continues today.

Pied Cuckoo, Buttuwa

Q: About your transition from a career in finance to becoming one of Sri Lanka’s leading naturalists?

A: There are many people who deserve the credit for this. Everything I know is what I learnt from someone else. The foundation was laid by my uncle Dodwell getting me interested and my parents and siblings who supported me. The friends and organisations I mentioned earlier allowed me to go into the field and join a group of people who could nurture my interest. The involvement of some people is not so obvious, but they played a key role.

Mr. Lokanathan the scout master in school realised I had potential and put me into leadership roles so that I could develop my self-confidence, people skills and be confident leading small field expeditions. George Ondaatje, an Advanced Level Physics teacher, taught me how to think critically. I went over to London to study Civil Engineering. I then qualified as a Chartered Accountant and then began to spend every week-end on field meetings organised by the London Natural History Society (LNHS) and the London Wildlife Trust (LWT) and local groups of the RSPB.

I did not realise it then but I was honing my skills as a naturalist and photographer and my city job was training me to look at things through a business lens. In 1996, I approached the Oriental Bird Club to ask if they would like to do a feature on the wildlife art of Lester Perera.

They made a counter offer. They would publish his art to illustrate ‘A Birdwatcher’s Guide to Sri Lanka’ if I could write in to complement what they had already published on India, Malaysia and Indonesia. I lead-authored this and the Sri Lanka Tourism industry were pleasantly surprised to learn that someone working in the financial sector in London was publicising Sri Lanka as a bird watching destination. I began to engage with people in Sri Lankan tourism.

The scene was set. I had by now acquired a fairly well-rounded set of skills to publicise Sri Lanka as a wildlife destination. But it needed two people to set things in motion. Firstly, my wife Nirma decided that after the birth of our first daughter Maya that we will return to Sri Lanka so that grandparents and grandchildren will have time together. I was not pleased. I was happy in London and my career was on a good trajectory.

Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne

But Nirma spoke to various people in Colombo and lined up job interviews and I found myself being a part of the management team set up to launch Nations Trust Bank. The next big step came when Hiran Cooray came home for dinner and suggested that I join Jetwing to set up a wildlife travel company as well as to develop the wildlife tourism potential of Jetwing Hotels. I agreed on the condition that I could implement some of the activities undertaken by UK conservation NGOs through the private sector, as we could integrate support for research and conservation into a business model.

So much to the surprise and initial dismay of many of the Jetwing senior team I joined Jetwing. They wondered what someone from the UK financial services industry could bring to one of the largest tourism companies. They wondered if it had been a mistake to bring me in and when I started talking about how Sri Lanka could become a big game safari destination for animals like Leopards, they were convinced I was a mad hatter.

They were incredulous. Leopards? Many of the senior team had been in tourism for about 25 years each and no one had mentioned leopards as a tourism product. Surely Hiran would now realise this was all a terrible mistake and send the mad man back to London to work in the city. Anyway, it’s another story, but the team at Jetwing soon realised that I had something useful to add and it was totally embraced. Before long, the sceptics became my allies. They remain as good friends to this day. Ifham, you were one of the first in the media to realise that I was a new voice in tourism and I believe you did the first press interview of me.

Q: Could you share the inspiration behind your latest book? What new elements or approaches did you introduce in this book?

A: In the early 2000s, I began a series of photographic leaflets and booklets with Jetwing Eco Holidays so that a wide range of people could have affordable literature to identify birds, mammals, butterflies, dragonflies etc. Some of these were sold for as little as one hundred rupees and made a huge impact as before the identification books available were very expensive, rare books and out of the reach of many people.

Publishers such as New Holland and John Beaufoy Publishing allowed me to develop the publications a stage further by commissioning me to produce affordable and portable photographic guides. These were important stepping stones.

Having seen photographic guides to multiple taxonomic groups it was always on the back of my mind to develop one for Sri Lanka. This book is not the first of this genre for Sri Lanka. FOGSL published books about the Talangama Wetland and Uda Walawe National Park, which were on this multi-taxonomic group theme. However, this book is the first in Sri Lanka to cover the popular taxonomic groups in good enough detail for field use when travelling around Sri Lanka. A key element in this book is that I invited 13 other section contributors to accelerate the publication timetable for this book. If I had tried to do it all by myself, we would still be waiting.

Q: How did you choose other authors featured in the book? Were there any that you found particularly challenging or rewarding to document?

A:I was aware of the work being done by others so it was easy for me to reach out to other authors who I knew had field experience and good images for writing sections that would be of interest to a natural history audience. There are a lot more people I could have brought in, and a lot more material I would have liked to have added. But the publisher did not want it become too big and expensive, an important consideration.

Q: Sri Lanka is known for its rich biodiversity. Could you discuss any conservation efforts you believe are crucial right now?

Firstly, we have to hold onto what we already have, these include what we know as Other State Forests. Secondly, we have to rehabilitate and restore damaged areas. Thirdly, we need to see how we can construct corridors for wildlife to move in-between forest patches. A useful idea put forward by Rohan Pethiyagoda is to re-wild the reservations beside our 105 river systems. We could also look at re-wilding a narrow belt beside our main roads and railways, where practicable.

We should also encourage landowners to make space for nature. This is not just the owners of big properties such as tourist hotels and factories to re-wild a part of their grounds. But even individual home owners can plant trees and shrubs which are friendly to native wildlife. In our city parks, we should plant groves of native dipterocarps so that people can understand what our land looked like a few hundred years ago.

Q: Are there any particular species or habitats in Sri Lanka that you feel are underappreciated or misunderstood by the public?

A: It’s a sad reality that very few Sri Lankans have had the opportunity to appreciate the wonder of a lowland rainforest. Even if they visited one, we don’t have enough trained people or the visitor education resources to do justice to what we have.

Until recently, wetlands were also under-appreciated. But with the beautification of Colombo and the actions of government agencies wetlands such as Diyasaru Wetland Park (Sri Lanka Land Reclamation and Development Corporation) and Beddegana Wetland Park (Urban Development Authority) are now being visited by many people for recreational activity as well as wildlife watching. Making it easy to use these sites for wedding shoots have been a game changer as not only do they bring in a lot of people they generate significant revenues to pay for their upkeep.

Q: What do you hope this book will achieve?

A: I hope it becomes the standard book which people will take with them into the field whether it is as a wildlife enthusiast or professional naturalist. I hope wildlife enthusiasts will start to widen the scope of what they look at. For professional naturalist guides I hope this book becomes a powerful tool which will help Sri Lanka to monetise its wildlife. When the country’s wildlife is aligned to its economic agenda, it becomes easier to make a case to conserve the country’s remaining wild spaces and the species within them. Unfortunately, this book won’t be within the reach of many people who work in wildlife and tourism. Therefore, in the book I have put in an appeal for foreign tourists to consider giving away their used copy to local people who may benefit from having it.

(To be continued)